WN@tl this week: Chris Hittinger on yeast biodiversity in the age of genomics

June 19, 2017 |

Chris Hittinger, assistant professor in the UW-Madison Department of Genetics, will be the featured speaker at Wednesday Nite @ the Lab this week. His talk, titled “Beer, Biofuels, and Beyond: Yeast Biodiversity in the Age of Genomics” will discuss how the focus on domesticated yeasts has created blind spots that the work on wild yeasts from nature have worked to illuminate. We have recently discovered new wild species that have hybridized with domesticated yeasts to ferment iconic products, including lager beer, the most commonly fermented beverage on the planet. Other diverse yeasts and engineered hybrids show considerable promise that remains to be fully explored.

Hittinger’s talk runs 7 – 8:15 p.m. on Wednesday, June 21 in room 1111 of the UW Biotechnology Center. It can also be viewed via live webcam at www.biotech.wisc.edu/webcams.